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Solar Powered Car Attempts to Break Record
Snowdon writes "Jaycar Sunswift III today started on its 4000km journey across the Australian outback, in an attempt to beat the 8.5 day record from Perth to Sydney. The team expects to complete the journey in 6 days, depending on the weather. It is a seriously innovative machine, with the aerodynamic design iteratively optimised on 80 CS lab computers over three months, custom-built carbon-fibre wheels, chassis, suspension and steering components, and custom-built power electronics and telemetry/control systems (components of which presently use Linux, but will soon run Iguana/Wombat). It is the result of several years' work by both undergraduate and postgraduate students at UNSW. Keep track of the team's progress by visiting www.sunswift.com."
Do you think it would survive a collision with a kangaroo? I hear they can be a problem in the outback.
The article title had me excited for a second - as a (ex-)member of the University of Waterloo's Midnight Sun Solar Race Car Team that broke the world record for the longest distance traveled on a solar car, I thought they were trying to erase us from the record books. I guess the distance record will be safe for next little while longer. :)
I wish you guys the best in your journey ahead! UNSW, for those that don't know, has one of the most advanced photovoltaic research labs in the world and probably still holds all the records for getting the highest efficiency out of Si-cells.
Seems to be slashdotted to me, and only 2 comments already.
God spoke to me.
The solar powered part is easy compared to trying to drive through the freakin Australian outback! In case you missed that Mythbusters episode, it's like hell out there in some places. A normal car would barely hold up so the real challege is to have the car not break. But hey, maybe someone could just remove the gas system from a hybrid Prius and wire an electrical system connected to TONS of solar panels duct taped everywhere on it and bubble wrap and duct tape the hell out of the rest of it so it holds together and tada, they've got a solar powered beast!
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
And I hope no one rains on their trip.
I wonder if I use bold in my signature, people will notice my posts.
One problem with this course is that its one-way, not symetrical. If a team wants to cheat, what they do is calculate the averate prevailing winds, and form their vehicles shape to get a boost from this. Not to imply this team is doing that, but because its possible and difficult to detect, a more symetrical course would be desirable.
Once again we are plagued with stories originating from this so called "Western Australia". As an Australian I am probably most aware of the myth of Western Australia, for those of you not in the know I'll lay it out for you. Have you ever been to Western Australia? No you haven't, have you ever met anyone who is from Western Australia? No, I didn't think so. Seriously ask around your office, no one has been there. Sure you hear about it in the news (such as the article) but finding good hard evidence of its existence just isn't possible. Why you ask? Because Western Australia doesn't exist. Think about it. The supposed state is massive, too large to practically be governed by one single state government. Furthermore it is conveniently placed about as far away as possible from any other people, people who could verify its existence. As far as I can tell the whole myth of WA started as an inside joke between cartographers. Soon many other professionals, publishers, politicians, journalists, photographers etc. took notice and they all created their own versions of the joke. Together they created a vast tapestry of "evidence" of its existence and culture. Over the years this myth grew and the various versions merged together. Today many people just assume the state exists. A good repository of false evidence can be found here. Unfortunately some people are so convinced of this preposterous notion they relentlessly revert my many edits to the site. Think about it people! A black swan? That doesn't make any sense at all, swans are white not black. OPEN YOUR EYES SHEEPLE!!
One of the links in the summary shows a picture of some animal - is that the "wombat"?
80 Australian CS lab computers - What's that in US computers?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
UNSW is a true veteran of the solar car racing world. I wish them all the best of luck in their treck across the outback, and hope they bring lots of spare tires!
Let me take this opportunity to plug the premire solar car race, coming up this October, for its 20th anniversary, the World Solar Challenge. I hope to be there, and I'm sure UNSW will join the rest of the field. Everyone come watch if you can, or at least follow along online.
http://www.wsc.org.au/2007/
This made me cringe... it always annoys me when I log in to use the lab computers only to find that the machine is running slowly because N students are running number crunching code on every lab machine they can find.
Some would go as far to lock the X console since they didn't understand how to use 'screen' to run their processes in a detachable console.
If students are going to do this is seems the very least they could do is get funding for the school to build a cluster exclusively for number crunching, or learn about screen and nice.
Anyway, nothing a good ctrl+alt+backspace or a hard reboot couldn't fix...
As a member of a college-level solar car team, I'm curious as to what the solar cells that it uses are. It's nothing special that just about everything on the car is custom built; that's a norm for SC teams. There are two divisions in the World Solar Challenge. One division, the more publicized, is restricted to "publicly available" (though not necessarily cheap) solar cells. There are various other limitations in this category as well. The other, which I know even less about, but allows any solar cells to be used.
A common reference that my team gives the public is that our car runs on the power of a hair dryer. Does this car attain more or less power.
I'd guess this project doesn't have any restrictions. I just wonder, that's all.
Off a stoplight my Dodge Neon would smoke this greenie weenie POS like it was standing still.
Mopar or No Car!
In previous years, the cars would have support crews who would head out ahead of the solar car and place plywood over the grid. Then, when the car had passed, pick up the plywood, overtake the solar car, and be in place for the next grid. Kind of defeats the purpose somewhat!
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
The highways in the outback are among the best roads around. They miss out on the two things that make roads break: Traffic, because they are not heavily used (~A few hundered vehicles a day), and weather, as it almost never rains. So, once built, a road needs little maintanence. The Ideal place for a solar challenge!
Dirt roads are a different matter. Next time I head west of the divide I'll take a new picture for wikipedia's "Corrugated roads" article that actually has some corrugations. 4 to 6 inches deep, and up to half a meter long on high speed roads. People head out at 100Km/h on them in domestic 4WD vehicles, and the coil springs break within the first few days.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Apologies. We've moved it to a much more appropriate server and updated the DNS. It should filter through to you all soon.
Maybe they had to borrow some solar panels from the nearby Telstra dual-28k tin can bush telegraph datacentre?
80 computers with a combined internet connection speed much greater than 56k?
The record the are going to beat was set in 1983 by a car drinving an average speed of 20km/h. That's not much of a challenge (they expect to be driving an average of 70km/h). It seems to me that this old record is still standing because nobody bothered to break it.
Another record, from Adelaide to Darwin (3000km) is held by the dutch solar car Nuna 3, which averaged 103km/h. This would have been higher if not for speed limits on the Australian roads. The speed record for solar cars (without any imposed limits) on normal roads has been more or less maxed out.
The challenge now lays in doing the same with cars with imposed limitations like using standard (affordable) solar cells and other parts, a collision "safe" car frame, passenger seats, anything that would make these cars come closer to something that people would one day actually use.
Of course building a car like the "Jaycar Sunswift III" is still a nice archievement, but it isn't very special anymore, and they should challenge other modern cars instead of 20 year old ones.
and here it is!
I, for one, welcome our new solar powered overlords.
Eclipse PDE and Me
Looks more like an echidna to me.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Are there any Open projects going strong for adapting a street car to have some added electrical drive + regen braking, I figure my 12 mile commute could be made considerably cheaper. I have always wondered why we [geeks] can't come up with a modification to add embedded motors on the free wheels of a two wheel drive - add some firmware and we're looking at bolt on 4 wheel drive + greatly improved torque at the wheels, something the performance modders can get excited about.
induction charging, or plug in at the garage at home, a small solar panel to top off at work before the schlep home...
Not from scratch like these guys...
http://www.theoscarproject.org/
yeah, I know I could google it...
.sigless since 2003
...does it run lin-- oh, nevermind.
UNSW is the University of New South Wales. It is located in Sydney, the state capital of NSW.
As a University of Toronto Engineer, I was a member of the UofT Blue Sky Solar Racing Team in 2003 and 2004. In that time, I had a lot of fun and met many great people, one of whom was Andrew Frow, who lost his life in a solar car accident in August of 2004. He was a great leader with a vision, who always kept the big picture in mind. He made every member of the team feel like they were doing something useful, even us F!rosh that didn't know anything about Engineering yet.
Aikon-
With the motor/gearing in those solar racers you could push a non-running car to 60'quicker on level ground.
I'd always heard that it was Idaho that didn't exist.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
yes, google but... I don't know about retro fitting, but the companies working on hybrids are working on that type of stuff for new cars. The technology is here, but as usual the problem is price. A good solar car motor will cost over $10k US. The battery pack will be more than that. Currently, there are a lot better things you could do with that money to save power.
the more miserable you are now, the funnier the story will be later
Exactly, The tech is maturing, but to gain I have to upgrade. Well, our 2 cars have planty of life in them, especially my commuter. I don't want to send either of them to the junkheap, just to increase my gas mileage, that seems like a very big net carbon loss, I'd rather reduce, reuse, recycle, repair, even if I had to ammortize over 5 years to see return.
.sigless since 2003
Depends on whether they are running Windows or Linux....
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
Those speed limits could only have applied in (the state of) South Australia, The northern Territory where the major part of the race would have been held only introduced speed limits last week.
You never catch me alive
From http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/kenge/womba t/latest/
Wombat is "A port of linux to run on top of L4/Iguana"
Just to clarify that the post makes it sound like they are switching away from linux.
At 4000km, even over 6 days, that's 4000km *( 1 mi / 1.6km ) / 6 days / 24 hours = 17 mph. Maybe it's just me, but it's hard to get impressed about something going as fast as I can on a bicycle, even if I can't bike for 6 days straight.
I saw a company in Australia that had an electric motor that mounted in the engine compartment. It was connected to the existing gas motor by a drive belt like an alternator and a battery pack was installed in the trunk. It was'nt so much for fuel efficiency as for a power boost off the line. During deceleration it acted as a generator (instead of the brake operated regenerative braking) and charged the battery. During steady driving it either freewheeled or kicked in so the engine didn't work so hard. mostly though it kicked in off the line to accelerate. Seemed like it could be reconfigured for greater efficiency or the gas motor could be sized down but they didn't talk of that. I've searched recently and not found them. I thought the excciting thing was to retrofit existing cars if there could be an efficiency boost.